The present invention generally relates to automatic welding apparatuses, and more particularly to an automatic welding apparatus capable of automatically performing a welding operation at a joint part of a rolled mounting eye, to weld the rolled mounting eye to a base cap of a shock absorber of an automobile.
Generally, a base cap having an eye substantially of a short pipe shape is mounted as a bottom lid on one end of a shock absorber used in the suspension of an automobile and the like. An eye-base cap body is constructed so that the eye and the base cap are connected together. Costwise, it is most advantageous to use a rolled mounting eye for the above eye. This rolled mounting eye is formed from a long and narrow plate member which is wound around in a spiral manner, cut along a line parallel to axis of the spirally wound plate, and then pressed in a direction perpendicular to the above axis of the spirally wound plate, to form a plurality of rolled mounting eyes through the above manufacturing stages. However, the rolled mounting eye thus formed has a joint part, which is originally formed by cutting along a line parallel to the axis of the spirally wound plate as described above.
Accordingly, it becomes necessary to fixedly weld the rolled mounting eye to the base cap at the joint part of the rolled mounting eye in order to obtain durability and strength. Thus, an operation is required in which the rolled mounting eye is rotated so that the joint part of the rolled mounting eye opposes the base cap upon welding of the two parts. However, the so-called joint aligning operation to position the rolled mounting eye as described above upon welding, was difficult to automate. Therefore, the above operation to align and position the joint part of the rolled mounting eye so that the joint part opposes the base cap upon welding, was conventionally performed manually. Hence, the production rate of the rolled mounting eye-base cap body was low, and there was a disadvantage in that the production cost of the rolled mounting eye-base cap body became high due to the manual operation which was required. Thus, the realization of an automatic welding apparatus capable of positioning the rolled mounting eye at a predetermined position and automatically performing the welding operation to weld the rolled mounting eye with the base cap at the joint part of the rolled mounting eye, was highly desired.